Liberation
by Black-Inque2002
Summary: Jacinta learns the hard way that love isn't always what one thinks it is, and the person we hope to inspire will never change. Rated M. Trigger warning for language and domestic violence. Nothing explicit, but I'm putting it there in case you don't want to walk down that road.


Liberation

Note: This is a one-shot made to wrap up my original fic "Hidden" that I'd started some time ago. I started writing "Hidden" as an innocent fangirl determined to pair my OC with the main antagonist, because, goshdarnit, we need our fantasy, right?

But, upon, adding a few more years of experience to my life and re-visiting Cybersix (especially the comics) I realized that having my OC's love "change" Jose was not only unrealistic, but verging into total Mary Sue territory. I needed to grow beyond that as a writer. I needed to write the real outcome of getting involved with someone that dangerous. And, kids, it's not pretty. It's never pretty. Love isn't always what we think it is, especially when we're young.

The door opened, letting out a waft of warm, steam-filled air as Jacinta stepped into the bathroom, one hand firmly clutching a towel around her while the other carried a pile of clothing, neatly folded as always by the anonymous hands of the Fixed Ideas launderers.

There was a click of a lock, a small declaration that she would invite no servants in after her. Depositing her clothes on the vanity, she tried and failed to ignore the faint tremble in her hand as she did so, just as she tried and failed to sweep her gaze past her own reflection in the mirror. But her eyes caught themselves in the beveled glass between the gentle fingers of steam, the diffused light glancing off of their distinctive golden shimmer. But their brightness only seemed to accentuate the shadows beneath them, a steady deepening of darkness that spoke of long nights without sleep...and of deepening aches that no sleep could heal.

She didn't dare glance any lower, swiftly turning aside to the large clawfoot tub, into whose Epsom-salt laced water she gratefully sank herself, though even that small gratitude was injured by the wince which pulled her lips into a pained curve as the heat met her skin.

It hadn't been Fixed Idea hands that had drawn the bath. It had been Helmut, done perhaps out of a silent sense of pity. He'd seen too many of the ones who'd gone before: beauties snatched from off the street, or procured from any one of Von Reichter's creations, quickly seduced and quickly disposed of in a long line of bodies devoured by his master's ruthless and unending appetites.

Jacinta may have had the distinction of lasting the longest, but, as she had learned recently from that same source of pity, she had not been the only in her tenure as Jose's latest plaything.

There was a gentle splash of water as her knees were drawn up to meet her forehead as she rested on them, the movement bringing into unwanted focus the livid patterns of purple and red from last night. The sight of them sent an equally livid streak of rage rattling down her spine to sit and snarl in her stomach.

_ That asshole…_

_ That unbelievable, lying, dick-swinging __**asshole! **_

She grit her teeth against the hot sting of tears that stabbed at the backs of her eyes, screwing them shut against a pain that had nothing to do with the constellation of bruises on her shaking limbs. It was the sort of pain that rose like a red sun on the sea, stained with all the unheeded warnings of the past three years, which she, in her youthful and stupid pride, had met with nothing but spiteful obstinance.

She heard those words again, echoing in her memory with such smug self-assurance as she'd built her castle of ignorance to stand between herself and those who had tried to save her _from_ herself:

_ "You're wrong about him!"_

_ "You don't understand what's between us. He's different with me. He's never done anything to hurt me." _

_ "Why can't you let this go? Why can't you just let me be happy?" _

And she had been happy, hadn't she? At least for a while, it had been good. Better than. The gifts lavished on her at every turn, the sparkling brilliance of gems pressed against her heated skin blinding her to the truth of what it meant to be owned. The words of sweetness which had deafened her to any voice but his as he promised her a trust and a love beyond which she had ever known. The sex, which had opened her virginal body to sensations and pleasures under which she had found herself drowned and unable to breathe in her reality.

A thin hand absently went to brush against the back of her neck. She recalled the smooth slide of cold metal and hard stone as his hands fastened a diamond collar about it. Magnificent in its beauty, she had stared at its reflection in the mirror, awed by how it had dripped and flowed across her skin, and completely unaware in her stricken state of how the diamonds had reflected across Jose's glasses in a deeply possessive gleam. _Mine_, his eyes and hands had declared as the chain closed. _All mine. _

Dress and undress. Paint her up and strip her down. Stand and pose her in the window for everyone to admire but only _he_ could ever touch.

A shudder passed through her, the heat of her rage turning to a pitching nausea at how often she'd let those hands do to her things which she'd never imagined a girl would ever want done. But she'd _liked_ it, hadn't she? She'd _liked_ it when he'd put his hands on her, when he'd make her sweat and moan and forget that she'd ever had anyone before him.

Even when…

Even when he'd started to get rough. Even when he'd started to fuck her without asking. Even when those sweet words had started to dry up in her ears and she'd started to wear his handprints like the jewels he'd once adorned her with. She'd obey. She'd lay in his bed, on his desk, wherever he wanted, close her eyes and _like_ it.

But last night…

Last night…

There'd been no love in last night. Not even fucking. It had been an exercise in brutality.

It had started with a phone call, a hum rattling on the desk alerting her to an urgency she was only too familiar with. Setting down her book, Jacinta had, with a feeling of foreboding, reluctantly picked it up to see her mother's name blinking on the screen in an insistent, maternal S.O.S.

She'd always wondered, in a niggling, back-of-the-mind sort of way, why she'd kept her mother's phone number. Any truly rebellious young woman eager to be free of such hand-wringing, suffocating worry would have deleted it a long time ago. Maybe it was a lingering sense of obligation, an acknowledgement of the woman who had single-handedly raised her when her father had abandoned them all those years ago, who had been her only source of love and comfort. For as long as she could remember, it had always been Magdalena and Jacinta versus The World.

But for the past three years it had started to look like Magdalena versus The World and Jose, with Jacinta caught in the unlucky buffer zone, attempting to play the neutral diplomat while the two empires of Family and Lover ran an arms race to either side of her as they tried to stockpile her love and loyalty.

And here she was, playing the diplomat again as she answered the phone to a dialogue that by now felt like a worn-out script from a worn-out play, the lines fading from so many repetitions. Her mother, begging and begging. Jacinta calming and calming, yet firmly standing her ground. Her mother now alternately begging and warning. Jacinta reassuring. She lost count of how many times they went back and forth, trading words like patches for an old quilt which had long since rotted away, but by the time she hung up, he was standing in her doorway. His arms were crossed, and the expression on his face one she recognized immediately. The flat look of pure rage, twisting his lips and crouching behind his eyes that he wore when he was in the mood to hurt someone.

As she gently skimmed a bar of soap down her arms, Jacinta wondered why she hadn't raised a hand to defend herself. She'd trained enough in the last three years, and Jose, trapped as he was in that little boy body, was certainly breakable enough.

But love was never rational. Love blinded. Love...or her version of it, had excused those fists when they were aimed at the servants. Love...or her version of it, had made her believe that as long he could take it out on _them_, he'd never take it out on _her_, the lady of the house. _His_ lady.

It was the shock. The sincere and complete disbelief that his hands had finally come for her, the months upon months of piled up resentment, festering like so much garbage, against her mother...and against her…had come swinging up at her eye in one blistering, white hot instant and shattered every excuse and illusion in her scream of pain. She remembered collapsing out of her chair, stunned like a shot deer, cruelly reminded by the roughness of his grip as he dragged her across the floor that he'd been made far stronger than any child had a right to be, and the only thing breakable in that room was her.

Jacinta choked back another sob that threatened to burst its way through her throat, instead forcing her attention back to her now madly scrubbing hands.

_ Scrub, scrub, scrub. Clean away the shock. The hurt. The pain in your skin and your bones as he broke you over and over. _

Don't cry. Letting herself cry would only let him win.

_ Scrub, scrub, scrub. Clean away those black and blue marks. Clean away what he did to you. What he had no _right_ to do to you. _

Yes, that's it. Scrub away the frailty. The naivete he'd taken advantage of. The string he lead you on for three years that he used to tie around your neck and lead you away from the only person who ever truly loved you. Take that pain, those tears that threaten to fall, take them and make them sharp. Raise them like a knife and cut that string.

With a strangled cry, the bar of soap was flung against the wall, the tears bursting at last in a downpour of helpless fury, salt mingling with the bathwater as she sank back against the hard porcelain. She didn't hold it back this time, instead making the choice to dive deep and feel every flaming tongue of it licking up her shaking limbs.

How had she let this happen to her? How had she missed the signs that everyone else had read so clearly scribbled on the wall in the blazing red of imminent disaster? How had she let a man—_boy_—entice her into complete isolation and dependence on his will that was noted for containing everything but goodness? How could she have let those hands, dirtied as they were with countless years of violence, ever lay themselves on her body?

A final, shaking sob left her suddenly drained, limbs going slack to float weightlessly in the bath, her mind quiet and empty as a sky after the turmoil of a summer storm, unaware and unfeeling of the pains which had sent her first stumbling in. Raising her gaze to the steam-shrouded ceiling, a coldness stole over her, a crystal realization of what would come after she stepped out and back into what waited for her beyond the locked door. Her hands clenched, not in anger, but in a resolve that rose from the extinguished fires of anger. Her mother's face floated in the slow, drifting patterns of vapor, but she quickly shoved it from her mind with shame.

No. Not yet. That was a face she wasn't ready to see. Not after she'd caused so much hurt.

Another face was brought to the fore, familiar black eyes under a fall of black hair which had once looked at her with a pity and compassion she no longer felt she deserved.

But when she opened that door, her life would boil down to two choices and only two choices; remain where she was and lose what little strength and dignity remained to her beneath Jose's indiscriminate violence, or seek out that woman and pray that she would be met with the same kindness and humanity she had spurned three years ago.

Scrubbing a rough palm across her eyes, Jacinta sat up in a sudden, agitated rush of water and reached for a towel to hastily rub the last vestiges of livid helplessness and exhaustion, the resolve which had sparked itself in the wake of her tears now grown into purposeful action.

_ Move,_ she told herself, slipping into her clothes as if she were donning a suit of armor, each piece offering a protective shield. A shield she knew she'd need, because the real battle would come the moment Jose realized she'd broken out of her cage and out of his grasp.

_ Just keep moving. It's the only way to get out of here. _

But she still didn't meet her gaze in the mirror. It would be a long time yet before she could do that without falling into the mire of guilt that waited behind her eyes. That would be another battle, but one that she could fight another day when she was ready to look the full truth of herself in the face.

Instead her eyes fell on the empty bed as she left the bathroom, eyes following the familiar dark spread of the blankets which had been smoothed into place by the Fixed Idea maids that morning. It sat in the lengthening shadows of the late afternoon like a slumbering beast waiting for its master's return.

She shivered, remembering the nights she'd lain in it, next to a similar sort of beast, her spirit and her will bleeding out into those sheets as she was claimed and devoured. She wondered then how many other women it had eaten before her, the flesh and the souls that had been sucked dry. The ones who hadn't gotten away.

Jacinta's fingers flexed against her thighs at the thought, an involuntary reaction that made her too acutely aware of the danger of lingering in that spot for too long. At this time of day, Jose would usually be meeting with some crime boss or other, either in his office or going out to inspect them personally. But he nearly always returned for dinner, which the cooks were by now beginning to prepare. That would leave at least some of the staff busy, but it didn't mean she could simply walk out the front door unnoticed. Even for so rambling a mansion as this, and even for her status, her comings and goings would be reported on. She'd have to find some other means of exit.

Not that it would be especially difficult. Jose's mansion, like so many dictators before him whose egos had swelled to encompass and suffocate the whole of the earth's atmosphere, had been selected for status, not for practicality. The only rooms in use on this floor were his own and a study/workshop where he frittered away with his mechanical obsessions, and the servants were only allowed up here when he gave his permission.

Which was not now.

Tearing her eyes from the bed and the memories it spawned, Jacinta swept past, telling herself that no love had ever been made in it. Only lies. She didn't bother to pack anything. Most of the clothes and jewels in the closets had been Jose's choice for her, not her own. He could use them to dress up his next whore.

As she suspected, the hallway was quiet. A meeting then, downstairs. She picked up her pace, passing Jose's workshop and making her way down to the unused wing of the mansion. She made sure to keep her steps light and on the center runner; there were likely to be some Types or Fixed Ideas patrolling below, though just as likely they wouldn't be listening for the errant creaks of aged joints as the house settled. As far as they knew, she was still in the bath.

As she walked she absently noted the delicate, spiderweb cracks that had journeyed their way along what must have once been a beautifully plastered ceiling, their marring presence among the vine-laden cornices attesting to the fact that Jose did not share in the aesthetic values of whoever had built this place. It touched her with a distant sense of regret that she had not spent more time up here and that she couldn't do anything now to stop the slow advance of decay.

_Trust Jose not to care about it_, she thought darkly as she came to a second suite of rooms tucked into the deep shadows of the western corner of the house. _Trust him to just destroy something beautiful. _

Creeping first into the bedroom, Jacinta squinted through the film of dust that clung to the empty air, diffusing the light slanting through the windows into a tomb-like dimness. Piles of it gathered in the corners and ran in dark lines across the baseboards, bringing with it a musty scent of a time long passed. Whoever had once lived here, there was no sign of them now. No abandoned furniture, no pictures forgotten on the mold-stained walls. Not even a scrap of paper upon which a note might have been absently scribbled. Just an overwhelming sense of _nothing_.

As much as she would have liked to have speculated on what this room might have once held and whose footsteps might have once walked here, she was aware that time was against her, and so she slipped towards the windows, her steps even more guarded against the bare floorboards. Little eddies of dust and detritus, awakened from the decades-long sleep, swirled in lazy circles around her ankles. Reaching out a tentative hand, she wiped it across the glass, attempting to give herself a clearer view of the back lawn but succeeding in giving herself an ugly smear that was only slightly less opaque than before.

But it was enough to show her that this wouldn't work. Even though Jose's lack of aesthetics extended to his back lawn, none of the overgrowth reached quite far enough to where she stood. She'd have to look somewhere else.

Heaving a quiet sigh of disappointment, she spun around and retraced her steps back into the hallway, turning this time into the bathroom. Unlike the bedroom, here she was greeted with the rusted remains of a clawfoot tub, toilet, and pedestal sink beneath the shattered mirror of a medicine cabinet, its door hanging akimbo to reveal overturned pill bottles with long faded labels. The dust was just as plentiful, caking every surface in blankets of dull grey. It gave her a momentary pause, but the drive to escape pushed her past any reservations about potentially getting herself dirty so soon after a bath. Dust could be washed away. Bruises couldn't.

Lightly, she stepped into the bath, the heels of her sneakers rubbing out a gentle squeak as she adjusted her position in front of the clouded window. A handle, delicately curved, revealed that the window could be opened, but the reservation she'd sought to hold in check peered back at her from the red ring of rust that bled out from its bolts.

Yes, _could_ be opened. Maybe half a century ago.

Jacinta bit back a curse and grabbed the handle. It was this or nothing. She had to hope that the passage of time would be considerate enough of her intentions.

She gave an experimental tug, careful not to use too much force to risk a suspicious noise or risk breaking the handle off altogether. It refused to budge, and with sinking expectations that her conclusions would be proven correct, she made to try again.

Nothing. Like an elderly mule, the handle remained firmly in place, the rust stains around it becoming suddenly like a cheerful, mocking grin at her efforts.

She _did_ let herself curse this time, her chosen expletive flinging hot and cathartic off of her tongue.

"C'mon, c'mon you piece of shit," she breathed with a grunt as she jerked at the handle again, this time much less gently. "Come _on!_"

After a few more tries and a few more colorful words that she knew would have made her mother cross herself in shock, she felt the hinges gradually loosen.

Good. This was good. Okay.

Her grimace rearranged itself into a stony smile of satisfaction as she continued to tug. She'd make that fucking mule move even if it meant wrenching her arm out of its socket. She'd make it move, and then she'd make Jose realize that a broken wing could still fly.

With a final vigorous yank, the window popped open in an agonized squeal of metal that failed to erase her smile as both she and the room took in a breath of fresh air. The dust, grey from a lifetime of stillness and shadow, seemed to dance in welcome of the sunlight and gentle breeze, wafting up in golden motes around her face before escaping outside.

She scanned the treeline, her smile growing wider as she spied a tangle of branches hanging not six feet from her. An easy enough jump, thanks to her training. The real trick would be how she would balance herself on the sill so she could make that jump as cleanly and quietly as she could.

_That's what you get for not trimming your trees, you dumbass_, she laughed to herself, now as buoyant and light as the dust motes that floated alongside her. A knee went to the sill, testing her weight against it, all of the fear, the rage and the pain sliding to the cracked tiles like so many invisible chains. _An escaped girlfriend._

_**Ex**_-_girlfriend. _

…

The apartment, as always, greeted him with its cramped silence as he shrugged inside, closing the door and leaning against it with a soft sigh of another week done. A tired flick of a finger turned on the main light, its yellow glow doing little to add any warmth to the cracked ceiling or the sagging skeletons of furniture which seemed to share in his end of the week fatigue. Attempting to appeal to the higher aesthetic appreciations of sixteen year olds via literature was never an easy task. The only things they seemed to have any aesthetic appreciation for were their phones, their Instagram filters, and, for the girls at least, how much makeup they could pile on for those filters. For the boys, well...One not need not have a Ph.D. in Literature in order to read what was going on in their hormone flooded heads.

A rueful smile touched his lips as Adrian Seidleman shed his trench coat on the nearest chair. It was a true testament to the generational divide. Half of the time he couldn't even understand what his students were talking about, they with their language born and raised within a digital realm that he, born and raised to treasure the noble weight of a book in his palm, could not decipher.

_I don't think Shakespeare or Whitman had any idea what they'd be up against_, he mused as he filled a tea kettle and set it to boil on his single gas burner. _Never mind myself. I should ask the others how they handle it. Lucas seems like he can through to his students. Most of the time, anyway. _

Waiting for the tea, he wandered over to the sink and mirror beside his bed and met his reflection. In the dying light of the afternoon, his features softened, chin becoming rounder, eyes becoming larger as he took off his glasses and tossed them to the nightstand. The necktie was loosened, shirt untucked, two sizes too large for the slender body beneath it. As the day faded, so did Adrian, though his tiredness remained set in the downward pull of the mouth and in the lingering shadows of the eyes.

_How long have I been like this? _Cybersix wondered, brushing a hand through her hair so that it fell forward in its usual style. Unconsciously her gaze flickered over to her closet, where through the cracked door she glimpsed a familiar black. _How long have I been hiding myself like this? Pretending to be someone I'm not? _

_ I'm not a teacher...I'm…_

The stinging screech of the tea kettle jolted her unkindly from her thoughts and she went to pour herself a cup of Earl Grey, her usual favorite on Friday evenings. But even as she dunked the teabag into the water, she felt them return, shooting through the cracks of her mental composure like hungry weeds.

_It's been three years since..._

She bowed her head. Three years since her hand had been forced and she'd entered into a deal that caused her nothing but regret since the moment she'd shaken on it. Stop attacking Jose's forces and she'd been regularly supplied with Sustenance...all for her help in taking down their shared creator and their shared tormentor. In the moment with von Reichter bearing down on them, it had been the only decision for her to make, all regard for the future thrown aside for simple pragmatism. She'd had to survive. At least, that's what she'd told herself. She'd had to _survive_.

And she had, in a sense. She'd hung up her cape and her suit like a worn out skin and settled into a life of normalcy and routine. Her world became lesson plans, after school administration meetings, work lunches with Lucas at Cafe Rivas sipping black coffee while bemusedly watching her friend wolf down half the menu. She'd forgotten the feeling of the night, the quiet solitude of the rooftops, the glitter of the city lights flashing under her feet as she hunted beyond their reach. She'd forgotten the euphoria of a fresh kill, the hot Sustenance pumping past her lips, burning its way into her veins with a life and a power she could taste nowhere else.

But now she had it delivered to her, promptly every Friday evening, dropped on her doorstep like the milk cartons of bygone days. She never saw who put it there. Only a single, sharp knock on her door announced its arrival.

It was just as well. All she ever needed was confirmation that Jose had kept up his end of the bargain.

_I should be happy that I don't have to hunt like I used to...but..._

But what? What was missing? Wasn't this what she'd always wanted? To be like everyone else? To not have to live a life constantly looking over her shoulder, fearing that at any moment danger could descend on her and those she cared about in a von Reichter created swarm of mutant abominations? She didn't have to live with that fear anymore. She could walk as a free woman wherever she willed, be with whoever she wanted to be with, pass her weekends and holidays aimlessly window shopping along the boulevards with their glamorous dress shops, watch a soccer match at a bar crammed with the cacophonous whoops and cries of drunken fans.

_But am I really free? _

She drifted over to the narrow double windows, peering outside down to the tangled streets below. Those streets had woven themselves into her mind and memory over the years, as essential to her very self as the lines that criss-crossed along the palm of her hands. They _were _her. The stacks of buildings, the crawl of traffic, the people bustling from place to place, all of it pulsed through her soul as the Sustenance had pulsed through her blood, feeding her beyond the needs of the body. This city, this decaying carcass of orphans, prostitutes, addicts...this mire of humanity...had brought her closer to her own heart. It had opened itself to her with skeletal arms, drawn her into the maggot-stink of its crime and its corruption and revealed to her a twin soul. A light that yet burned, buried beneath the rot, waiting for her to hand to shelter and guide it.

_As long as __**he's**__ still out there...can I call myself free? _

A group of teenagers caught her attention, their brightly colored backpacks swaying as they jostled their way down the sidewalk, their teasing grins and laughter sending an ache that bloomed through her chest at sheer_ innocence_ of their existence.

_Can I call __**them**__ free? _

She watched as the group disappeared around a corner and mindlessly took a sip of tea that did nothing to soothe the ache. Those kids...They were just as much at risk as she was. All the moreso, really, because they knew nothing of the evil she could have been out there fighting the last few years. The evil that _she_, in her desperation to save her own skin, had helped to put in place.

_I took down one dictator and let another one take his place_. Her fingers tightened around the cup. _What a coward I was! Shouldn't I of all people have known better than that? _

_ I should have killed Jose when I had the chance…_

In a sudden fit of agitation she set her cup down and ripped off the tie, the feel of it against her skin too restricting, holding too much of the identity she'd longed to cast away. It was quickly followed by the shirt, falling to a forgotten heap on the floor. Next came the pants and the shoes, their heavy leather knocking against the rickety leg of her desk.

_Adrian's_ shirt. _Adrian's_ tie. _Adrian's _shoes.

The closet door was flung open, hinges squealing dangerously in protest to her frustration, eyes roving about for anything that _wasn't_ Adrian's. Shoving aside the collection of sensible beiges and grays, she pointedly ignored the leather crammed into a corner like a broken's raven's wing. She wasn't ready to look at it yet, to feel again the weight of the responsibility that came with wearing it...and the guilt for abandoning it.

Throwing up a roadblock against that train of thought, her hand settled on one of the few things she'd chosen for her_self _and quickly shut the door against any more maudlin contemplations. She slipped it on, letting the shirtdress fall light and loose to her knees. Made of simple red cotton, it was only the second time she'd worn it, the first being in the shop when she'd bought it if for no other reason than it _wasn't_ a sweater vest or a cardigan. It was something a regular woman would wear on a regular weekend. To meet friends, maybe, or…

Lucas's face swam into her mind's eye then, his usual jovial grin playing about his rugged features. She imagined the feel of his hand on hers, warm and rough, yet holding her own with such tenderness, such recognition of the humanity she'd always denied herself.

She'd wanted to wear this for him. She'd wanted to walk, arm in arm, on an evening like this, down the lane, free of all secrets and all pretensions. She'd wanted to, finally, be _his_ as _her._

There was a knock at the door, yet, caught up in the shimmering strands of fantasy and longing, it took her a few seconds to register the sound. A blush of embarrassment nearly as red as her dress bloomed hotly over her face as she started back to the world of chipped tea mugs and creaking floors...and the cold loneliness that came with them.

_So much for avoiding maudlin contemplations_, she berated herself as she made for the door. Anticipating her weekly delivery, she didn't bother with the peep hole, hand reflexively going to turn the doorknob.

What came next did not play into her anticipation. Instead it took her anticipation and smashed it against her ancient floorboards with all the twisted glee that Jose might have mustered when he got his hands on a very large and very lethal projectile weapon. Which, given what...or rather, _who_...was revealed as the door opened, he might just do yet.

Instead of the acid green glow of Sustenance, Cybersix met the fearful golden glow in the wide eyes of a girl she hadn't seen in three years. The very root of all of this mess, the cause of countless midnight calls from her mother in frantic tears and pleas for her daughter's safety. The girl who had once been her student, diligent and hard-working, who had shown so much promise for a future beyond what Meridana would give her, and who had, in the end, spat on that promise for a future as little more than a concubine.

Here she stood, as if expecting to be invited in, and for a brief moment, Cybersix gave serious consideration to shutting the door in her face. Why should she give shelter to, let alone acknowledge, someone who was literally sleeping with the enemy?

A second glance at that face, however, immediately dissolved the initial spike of anger when she spied the ugly seepage of purple and blue that ringed one glassy eye, evidence that Jose had finally shown his true colors. It should hardly have come as a shock, knowing as she did of the little clone's perversions, but she felt it nonetheless like a bolt up her spine, with pity quickly trailing in its wake. This was just a girl, after all. Barely grown beyond the schoolyard, and with no knowledge of how horrific the world could really be. What right did _she_ have to judge her ignorance when she'd happily played along with the charade?

"Jacinta..." Her same slipped unbidden from Cybersix's lips, yet in it's utterance it held the acceptance of mutual suffering, of a camaraderie that neither had been aware of until this very moment.

Jacinta offered her a thin smile, as brittle as the hope she carried within her. Brittle as a newborn revolution.

"Hello, Cybersix."


End file.
